It Breaks For You
by goldfish400
Summary: When Maui's warrior face breaks, it is only Moana who can see right through its cracks. It is only Moana who can see right through his act, right into the core of his being. To who he truly is. It is only her that can tell when he is upset, and it is only her who is able to comfort him.


"Was it...always that big?" Moana's voice says below him, and when Maui looks down from the top of the mast she's twisting her face in some weird combination of recollection and confusion. He laughs, and hops down onto the deck below. As soon as he's out of her way, Moana wraps the halyard around her wrist and tugs. The sail, embedded with the familiar red insignia of Te Fiti's heart immediately pops open and catches on the wind, sending the canoe lurching forward as they make their way back to Motunui.

He laughs. "Tamatoa's collection? Don't flatter him, Curly. Course it wasn't"

Early this morning, Maui had caught sight of Moana sneaking down to the beach from the center of the village. She was by herself, and often paused to check to make sure she wasn't being followed. The way she stumbled as she walked didn't quite match up with the position of the early morning sun, and the way her hair was already beginning to frizz told him she was under a lot of stress. He frowned, and when she was out of sight from the rest of the village, he went after her.

Often times, when Moana finds herself overwhelmed, stressed, or needs time to herself, she disappears to a small, closed off part of the beach, far off from the rest of the village where nobody else can find her. Maui had followed her, once, when she had turned towards him at just the right angle for him to catch the heavy bags under her eyes, and found her hidden refuge entirely by mistake. At first, when he stepped out of the trees to join her, Moana had told him she wanted to be alone. But then she changed her mind just as he turned around, and called him back to sit with her.

Only him. It is _only him_ who knows the location of her hideaway from the rest of the village. It is only him she allows in her company when she would otherwise wish to be alone. _You're my best friend_ , she had said. _I trust you_ , she had said. Moana trusts _him._ With a secret _nobody else in her village_ knows about. Each time he came down, no matter how much something was bothering her, Moana always moved over, made room for him, and welcomed him in her refuge. Even if he more than often failed to come up with the comforting words to help her.

This morning, however, was different. When he found her, sitting against the shore, he did not join her side. This time, he stood in front of her with his trademark grin, blocking her view of the ocean, and had told her he was thinking about heading down to Lalotai. He tried to play off inviting her to come with him as 'needing someone to cover him' in case he had any bad run-ins. But Moana knew better, saw right through his excuse, rolled her eyes at him, and with a quick check-in with the village to make sure she wasn't direly needed, off the two of them went.

It was his idea, not to Moana's surprise, to go 'check in' on Tamatoa. The last time he had come down here, a bit after he and Moana had restored Te Fiti's heart, they had gotten into a fight. With his newly restored hook, Maui was able to flip Tamatoa back onto his shell, and he wanted to see if he was still stuck there for laughs. Tamatoa had somehow gotten back up to his feet after Moana- _Moana_ knocked him onto it the first time, and Maui could tell by Tamatoa's screeches and groans of frustrations when Maui had knocked him back onto it the second time that not a lot of time had passed. Much to both his _and_ Moana's surprise, when the two of them got down there, he was on his feet and wandering around his cave, and the collection he stored on his shell was _much_ taller than it had been the last time he'd been down there.

"Where does he even find the stuff, anyway?" Moana asks. "Lalotai just doesn't seem like the place you'd just be able to find gold lying around like it's nothing"

Maui laughs at that. "It's not" he says, shrugging, because it isn't. Usually, if Maui found any sort of gold trinket down just lying around in Lalotai, he would always find it in the same area, just under the section where boats would pass over the water on the surface and where unlucky passengers would mistakenly drop things into the surface below. But even then, they had often been trinkets, trinkets Tamatoa would let him keep when he brought them to him because they were "too small" or "not shiny enough". Other than that, Tamatoa would have to leave the realm of monsters to go scavenging, something Tamatoa has grown too large to do.

"I'm not even sure how Crabcakes' collection got so big, but I've got a pretty idea as to _why"_

Moana blinks at him in confusion. "What do you mean?" She asks, and Maui shakes his head.

"Tamatoa's got a _big_ envy problem. He sees someone with something he doesn't have, and he goes out of his way to make sure he gets it from them." He shrugs again. "Or, when he _can't_ , he then decides he has to be _better_ than the other person the only way that dim-witted bottom feeder knows how"

"With his treasure" Moana suggests, and Maui nods in affirmation, but then the confusion on her face only seems to worsen.

"Then- why would his shell be so much bigger _this_ time? What difference would it make if he tried to show off his bigger collection to you?" She asks, and he laughs again. He pushes aside his necklace, and on his chest, right over his heart, Mini Moana squints in irritation at the sudden exposure to the sunlight.

"Her." Maui says, gesturing to her halfheartedly, and shrugs. "Tamatoa seems to think I have a new tattoo every time I see him. And that I get them just to 'spite him' or something." He shakes his head. "Happened a lot in the past, too. He couldn't seem to accept the fact that I'm _so much cooler than him._ That I had something 'better than he did'. Always seemed to think he had to be on top. Be the cooler one"

"Which, of course- failed" Moana fills in for him, rolling her eyes in amusement.

"Right. But did that stop him? Absolutely not. Each time I'd go down there with a new tattoo, he'd pile more and more gold onto his shell. Eventually cared less about the appeal and more about the size. As long as he could 'prove' that he was bigger than me, better than me, he didn't care what went on his shell as long as it was _tall_ and _sparkled."_

"What happened?" Moana asks, starting to look more interested in his story than finding their way back to Motunui. Maui rolls his eyes.

"He couldn't keep up with me. After a while, he tried to pile more gold onto his shell even when I _wasn't_ coming to see him. When I was too busy. He'd pile masses and masses of gold onto his shell. But then I'd start coming down, and he'd notice _two_ new tattoos or _three_ , and no matter how tall his collection got- it wasn't enough for him. For every new tattoo he noticed, he added on _two_ more piles of gold-because he couldn't just sit back and let me have something he didn't."

"And one day he decided he'd had enough. I came in with some tattoo-" he says, and glances down at himself. "I can't even remember which one it was now, but it was one of the bigger, more obvious ones. Anyway," he says, shaking the thought away. "I come in with this new tattoo, and his collection is so big it's teetering, right?" He says, and Moana gasps quietly, like she can already tell _exactly_ where the story is going.

"-and as I'm walking in, off half of it goes. Straight to the floor" He says, and makes an explosive gesture with his hands to demonstrate. "And he _lost_ it. Started yelling, screaming, because apparently that had been _years'_ worth of work. And then he turns to me- starts yelling at _me,_ because _my_ tattoos are permanent, _mine_ can't fall off like his did. And _then_ he starts saying I _cheated._ He worked hard to earn his gold, to go after it himself, and claimed I was using a handicap. That my _hook_ was helping me _cheat_ at earning tattoos. He tried to take it from me, after that, and…" Maui finishes, letting his voice trail off.

"Is that when you…?" Moana asks, her voice trailing off like she already knows the answer.

"Ripped off his leg?" Maui offers, and she nods. "Yep. He fought pretty hard to try and take my hook from me, but I fought back harder to keep it away. I ripped his leg off that day and left without looking back. All because he was _envious_ over some tattoo I'd earned a few hundred years before"

"That's...awful" Moana says, temporarily focusing her attention away from him to readjust the sail.

"It's fine" Maui says, and shrugs. "He wasn't a great friend to begin with" he says. "It wasn't until…" he trails off, and turns his gaze to her before he continues. "...Much later, that I really realized, but I if I had the opportunity to go back and change things, I think I'd leave them as they are"

"Oh" Moana says, cheerily, and shrugs, but then her cheery smile is quickly replaced with one amused and full of mischief. "Then maybe we should've taken from his collection to prove that _we're_ always gonna be the cooler ones" She says, and he laughs.

"We still can, Curly. Doesn't take a lot to turn the canoe around" He says, and she rolls her eyes at him.

"Yes, but we've been gone all morning, and I don't think there'd be any point of turning around when we're already almost here" She says, and gestures with her head to something in front of her. Maui turns, and sees that she's gesturing towards Motunui's spiraling peaks in the distance.

...Huh.

The time had just _flown_ by just from _talking_ to Moana. He'd for sure thought they'd still have hours to go, but he realizes, with a start- that it actually _had_ been hours.The sun was just beginning to appear over the horizon when they left Motunui, and now, as they're coming back, the sun is high above their heads, almost threatening to begin setting.

"That makes no difference to me, O Chosen One" Maui says. "As far as these guys are concerned, we could be out until the sun goes down. We have every right to turn around if we want to"

Moana snorts as she pulls the sail all the way open to get them to shore faster. "Yeah, like my parents aren't gonna find _anything_ suspicious about watching our canoe come all the way into shore only to _turn around_ at the last second." She says, and Maui watches as she hops off the boat. She walks to the hull of the boat, and begins tugging backwards until it's up on the sand.

"Well, they are _now,_ " He says, mock annoyance evident in his voice. "Had you turned us around when I suggested it instead of doing the exact opposite, we could've gotten away with it without them noticing".

"Uh-huh" Moana says, unconvinced, as they begin to walk back towards the village. "And it's not like anyone watching for me from the village could see because the ocean is visible from literally everywhere from the island and start asking questions- it's just if my parents see, right?" She says.

"Exactly." Maui says, with enough sarcasm to match her own. "Course someone else would've seen us. Your parents are just the only ones who would've said something"

"Mmhmm, sure" She replies, still unconvinced, and rolls her eyes. "And it's not like it'd just be better to wait until I have more time later today, right? Turning around when we're already so close is the only option we had?"

...He actually hadn't considered that. He closes his mouth, groans at his inability to win _any form of argument_ with her, and she laughs.

"Besides" Moana adds, grinning in her victory. "Tamatoa tends to sleep a bunch later in the afternoon, right? Wouldn't it make more sense to steal from him in his sleep? That way he can't attack us when we take from him?" She asks, and once again, Maui has no way to argue against that. So he doesn't, and opens his mouth to change the subject when he's suddenly cut off by Moana's parents.

They're calling her name, and in an instant, she is gone from his side and sprinting ahead to meet her parents at a halfway point as they come out from the village to meet her. It's no big deal, really. Moana runs off like this all the time. He's just lucky she doesn't have wings, or else she'd be flying off every five minutes and the only way he'd be able to ground her is if he went after her himself. And Maui can't help but smile as he watches Moana's parents welcome her back from her short voyage with him, because it reminds him of just how accepting Moana's people are.

...Even towards him.

The first time he agreed with Moana's asking him to come into her village, he had done so tentatively. Because a good number of islands he visited after he accompanied Moana in restoring Te Fiti's heart had turned him away on sight. They shouted angry things at him, blamed him for their dying islands, the death of voyaging. This was the last thing he wanted to happen with Moana's people. Because Moana's his best friend. He wanted, more than anything, for them to accept him. Because the last thing he wanted was to be unable to see her just because her village spit the same angry words at him he'd heard at dozens of islands before.

But...they didn't. Even right away, the first time he made his way to the heart of her village, it was much different than the other ones he'd been to. There were no angry words, no threats, no dirty looks. Everyone welcomed him as their guest with open arms. The kids flocked to him right away, demanding stories or to see him transform into whatever animal they threw out at him.

It was nice.

He began to visit Moana more often after that, and each time he came he was met with the same, overwhelmingly positive reaction from everyone in the village. Even those select few adults who had been hesitant around him the first time opened up to him and began talking and laughing with him as often as they did with those they've lived with their entire lives.

And…after a while, he slowly found himself beginning to view Motunui as home.

Maui blinks, jolting himself from his own thoughts. When he comes back to himself Moana is still talking to her parents about what the two of them had been doing all morning. He shakes his head, goes to roll his eyes, but then...Moana's parents both pull her into a hug at the same time.

It's a common gesture, one they often do when she comes home from a voyage. No matter how long she leaves for, whether it be a number of weeks or a number of hours, Moana's family always welcome her back by pulling her into a hug, running their hands through her hair to make sure she's okay. And Moana welcomes the gesture every time. Every time the two of them come home, she always rushes forward to meet them.

...They've never said a word to him. Not once have they ever come down to the beach to meet both him _and_ Moana. Nobody's ever come down to meet both of them. He's never had anyone come down to meet him to tell him that they missed him.

He blinks, and turns his gaze away from where Moana is still talking to her parents.

He's never really had a family that cared about him like they do before. He winces, at the sudden thought, and an uneasy feeling begins building in his stomach. He tries to push the feeling down, turn back towards Moana to say something, but when he turns to look at her the feeling only seems to worsen.

It reminds him- he realizes suddenly- of Tamatoa. The uneasy buildup in his stomach reminds Maui _exactly_ of the irritated, envious look in his former friend's eyes as he tried to take his hook from him and Maui does not like the feeling at all. Panic slowly beginning to mix its way into his ugly mix of emotions, Maui silently slips away, completely unnoticed, and walks back towards the beach. He does not stop walking when the sand is below his feet, and instead he keeps walking until he is well away from the village. Slowly, he plops himself down on the sand and stares out at the horizon. But he's not really looking at it. Not really.

He is envious of _Moana._ Over something _she cannot help._ It's not her fault he doesn't have a caring family. That his threw him away like he was worthless. It's not. That's all his fault. So he shouldn't be envious of her. He _can't_ be envious of her.

It is through Moana that he learned what a true friend was. Tamatoa wasn't a great friend, and he suspected at the time, but it wasn't until he met Moana that he knew for sure. Moana is soft and Moana is kind. She speaks softly to him when he is down. Speaks encouraging words to him when he needs comforting. Moana is lively, with enough energy to match his own. She laughs with him, even when nobody else around them does. Under the stars, when she cannot sleep, she comes to find him until she does. Moana is his _best friend_. He's got more than enough experience to know that envy destroys friendships, and he can't even stand the _thought_ of what it would be like to lose Moana's friendship. He would rather hand over his hook to Tamatoa 100 times over than to repeat his past mistakes with Moana if it prevented him from losing her.

"Hey!" Moana's voice suddenly says from behind him, jolting Maui from his thoughts. He sits up into a more comfortable position, and quickly, before she can see the worry in his expression, he assembles his warrior face, covers it with a false smile, and turns to her.

"Hey," he says back, forcing his tone to sound just as cheerful as her own. He turns his gaze back to the water, and for a few moments, Moana says nothing. But then he feels a small spray of sand get flicked towards his back as she takes a step closer to him.

"Is there something bothering you?" She asks, and it actually shocks him how quickly she was able to see right through him. He blinks a few times, and his warrior face slips off and breaks. He sighs.

"...How can you tell?"

"Maui, I've known you for _two years._ I know you better than anybody" She says. "Don't think I can't tell when you're trying to pull your warrior face on me"

"Still." Maui replies. "Two years isn't even that long for _you._ How can you tell for sure?" He asks, and Moana _laughs,_ like his question's _ridiculous_.

"Maui" she calls his name laughingly, but he does not turn around. "Maui, look at me" she says, still laughing, and Maui can't help himself. He turns to look at her, and is a little caught off guard to see that she's pulling…

… _His_ warrior face. Not her own, because she _definitely_ has one of her own, but right now she's somehow copying the warrior face he spent thousands of years perfecting for _himself._ _Flawlessly._ When she catches the surprise in his expression, however, the expression slips off face right away and she starts laughing again.

"You _taught_ me that face" Moana says, and rolls her eyes. "Don't think I didn't learn to recognize it pretty quickly"

Maui can't help but snort a laugh at this. At Moana's overconfidence. Because she's right. Even though they've only known each other for two years- _two years,_ Maui truly does feel like Moana knows him better and understands him on a more personal level than anybody he's ever known.

But at the same time, this also reminds him of why he came down here in the first place, and his smile drops from his face. Before he can think twice, rearrange a fake one right over the old one, Moana's smile drops too.

"Seriously, Maui. Is there something wrong?" She asks, using her soft voice, and Maui wants to huff out a bitter laugh. But he doesn't, and instead settles for turning his head away from her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Moana frown as she takes another cautious step towards him.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?" Moana asks. Yes, he thinks bitterly, which is exactly what's bothering him. Because if he lets this envy build, this envy over her family- he's afraid they'll drift apart until this is no longer the case. He doesn't respond.

Moana blinks, like she can tell exactly where this is going. "I'll just keep asking" she says, but still he says nothing.

"Come on, what's wrong?" She asks, her voice straining a bit, and she clears her throat. "You trust me, right?" She says, and takes another step forward. "Look around you. Look where you're sitting" she says, and for the first time since he's walked down here, Maui takes a look at his surroundings. He recognizes it almost instantly as Moana's hideaway- the one place she goes to be away from the prying ears of the village. The one place where there is quiet and peace.

And if you welcome it, like she always does, it's the one place where you've got someone you can talk to. Someone willing to listen.

"It's just me and you" Moana continues. "And I'm here for you." She says, and takes another step towards him. "I'll _always_ be here for you. No matter what's bothering you". She says, and he sighs.

Nobody can break him into talking quite like she can, either. He turns to look at her again, and frowns. Because he _really_ doesn't want to be envious of her over her family. It isn't fair to her. He's struggled with issues about his family his entire life, and continues to do so to this very day. It's not often, but once in a while, when he's not busy doing or thinking about other things, everything just comes hitting him all at once, and it takes a lot to drag himself back up out of it. The weight of it sits heavily on his shoulders, and it makes him feel like he is being dragged back down to the sea.

Sometimes he still has dreams about them. About drowning.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and when he opens them Moana is standing next to him. There is sadness in her eyes.

"It's…" He says, pausing to choose his words carefully, trying to figure out a way to weave through them so he doesn't accidentally make it sound like he's upset at her. Because he's not.

"It's you, Moana" he sighs out, and rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly. "I don't know. I was just watching you talk with your family like you normally do," he says, and pauses to shrug. "And it-it got me thinking about mine again, I guess. About what they did"

Moana takes this as an invitation to sit next to him, and the sadness in her eyes only looks worse. Like she is in _pain._ He goes to turn his gaze away from her, but then she starts to speak, and he finds that he can't.

"Look, Maui-" she starts, and even her _voice_ sounds pained. "Your old family-what they did- You shouldn't measure yourself on that. What you saw, earlier today, I'm _sorry"_ , she says, like talking with her parents is something she should be _apologizing_ for. She pauses for a brief moment. "Your old family-" she continues. "They didn't care about you. They didn't want you" she says, and now he can't help as he turns away from her to stare down at the sand. _Tell me something I don't know,_ he thinks, and has to force himself not to laugh bitterly. Just out of the corner of his eye, he can see Moana's frown deepen, and she shifts her position until she is sitting on her knees with her hands on her lap. He can physically _see_ her take a deep breath, and it's not long until he feels her gaze lock onto him, but he does not take his gaze off of the sand below.

But then she speaks again.

"They're _not_ your family" she says, stressing hard on _not,_ and it takes everything in him not to whip his head violently towards her as he returns his gaze to her, shocked. "Families- they _care_ about each other, Maui. Unconditionally." Moana says, and shifts her position again until she is sitting against the sand. She tugs her legs to her chest and wraps her arms around them, holding herself. "What they did to you-" She says, and her voice drops off before she can finish her sentence. "They were being selfish. They didn't consider the consequences. You could've died for all they knew and they didn't care" Her hands clench tighter around her knees, like she is becoming indignant on his behalf. "They were only thinking about themselves." She shakes her head. "That's not what a family is. Maui, you shouldn't- you shouldn't waste time thinking about them, even if you've literally got all the time in the world. They're just not worth it" She says, and all Maui can do is stare, blink a few times to try to ease some of the shock away.

Moana is defending _him._ His best friend is defending him against his _family._ Saying they should've considered the consequences. That they're _not_ his family, because families care unconditionally. Without a second thought. Without needing an excuse. And she's right. They never cared. Not even from the first moment. He barely remembers them. Even in those rare occasional nightmares, their faces are blurred. But he remembers what they did. The image of his mother's blank, emotionless expression as she tossed him over is burned into his mind, even long after he's forgotten her face. _They_ did not care. Moana, he thinks. Moana cares. She always has.

Maui eases up his expression, the shock finally melting away completely. He thinks about saying something, _anything,_ but then she continues, and everything in his head empties in an instant.

"They don't deserve you" she says, loud and clear, and Maui finds himself completely frozen in place. His mouth hangs open for a brief moment, from whatever he had planned to say, and he forces himself to snap it shut.

What has he ever done to deserve a family? His family-no, his _old_ family, just as Moana's been placing it all afternoon- They threw him away because they did not care. They did not want him. _Him._ Even if they were being selfish, as Moana puts it, it was still him that they threw away. It's his fault, he's always been convincing himself, because if he had been anyone else this wouldn't have happened. Because he was not good enough for them.

But now Moana, his best friend, _who cares for him like family,_ is telling him that _they_ are not good enough for _him. They're_ the ones to blame. They are the ones at fault for doing this to him. And it makes him want to laugh, thinking about how ridiculous it sounds to him now that he would think any other way.

Not just that, either. Moana is saying that they don't _deserve_ him, like he has value. That he is _worth_ something to her. He is worth enough to her that she believes he is worth more than his past. Enough that she's trying to convince him to think the same. That he deserved a better past. That he deserves to be _happy._

With the blink of an eye, gone is any lingering bits of his envy from earlier, replaced with the beginnings of something of warmth and acceptance.

And without warning, Moana continues on.

"You can't always find happiness where you come from. You just can't, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself you can". She tears her gaze away from him to glance back towards her village. "You can't always find happiness right-" and then she pauses to snort a laugh, like she's sharing an inside joke with herself. "-Where you are" she says, demonstrating air quotes with her hands around 'where you are'.

Moana turns her gaze back towards him, and she smiles. Genuinely. "Sometimes you have to look elsewhere" She says, gesturing with her head out towards the ocean, and it's only now that he realizes that she had also been partly referring to herself. "Your family-Your _real_ family can be found anywhere. Sometimes you just have to look out there to find it" she says, and this time she gestures out at the horizon with her entire arm. He follows her gesture, and blinks in surprise as he finds himself staring off towards the direction of his old island.

Briefly, he wonders, if she is still partly referring to herself. If she is trying to say that _she_ found family in _him._ Which is impossible, because-

…

Because _he_ found family in _her._ Because _she_ is his real family. Moana is his found family, and he crossed the horizon to find her.

"Your real family is out there somewhere" She continues, oblivious, and he turns to her because she _could not be more wrong._ His real family isn't out there, past the horizon. His real family is right here, sitting next to him, trying to convince him he has one at all.

"So, just because you don't have a blood family," she says, tucks some of her hair behind her ear as she looks at him. "It doesn't mean you don't have a family at all, right?" She finishes, and he huffs out an amused breath and shakes his head, eyes closed. Her question is meant to be rhetorical, but he already has the answer.

So he smiles at her with all the affection he can muster. It is the same smile, he quickly realizes, that he had given her as they said their goodbyes on Te Fiti's shore two years before. After a brief moment, recognition lights up her face, and it's shortly replaced with what appears to him a look of sweet nostalgia.

"Yeah," he says, finding himself using the same affectionate tone that had only two years before told her that _if I were the ocean…_ "Right" he says.

When his warrior face breaks, it is only Moana who can see through its cracks. It is only Moana who can see right through to who he truly is, and it is only Moana who can read him and his expressions just as easily as she does so for herself. When he is upset, it is only Moana who can see through him, no matter how many barriers or false smiles he puts up, and it is only she who can comfort him when he needs it.

Moana _knows_ him. Maui does not need to explain that _she_ is his family, because she can see right through him. She knows how much he means to her. How much _she_ means to _him._ She knows that they are a family. That she is his _tuafafine._

Because his warrior face- his shield that blocks him out from the rest of the world- that he built to prevent anyone from getting in-

It breaks for her.

He does not need to explain to her, so he does not. He just keeps his gaze on her, for a few moments, and after a few short moments, when realization comes to her, Moana returns his warm smile with one of her own.


End file.
